Gateway Laptop Adapter "Lite-on" Disassembly

Today my Gateway M-6862's charger suffered a failure. While the unit it self was fine, the cable that lead to the laptop was not. It was rather bent, and was causing a short circuit which induced smoke to come out from the adapter.

So I trashed it, and got a universal adapter.

This is the inside of the Gateway adapter. Pretty good construction if I say so my self, average/decent soldering, more then sufficient quality in components. Unfortunately no capacitor brand or serial to track down it's manufacturer/specifications as far as temperatures go, and it was all glued (obvious white/beige color)...

Now, I am no electrician so I could not tell you what this adapter is exactly rated or capable of handling, apart from the label stating 4.72a@19v= which is 90w~.

Here's the case/label.. I must say this sucker was very difficult to open. Some other adapters open up with a few good bumps on the side.

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Testament to my statement "very difficult to open"... Go go cheap screw driver set.

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Now the power supply:
Here's the power supply in it's natural habitat, a wooden flat surface of a cheap office depot desk... It's demonstrating a territorial threat for us to leave it alone by showing us it's metal sharp edges, and long streamline body..

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It's plug to connect to the AC cable.. Notice the three hole dongle... bam chicka wah wah..

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The back is covered it it's all off-white glue, shamelessly/intently displaying the average to sub averaging soldering of it's creator as if to say... nm..

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Finally the front (or back) of the power supply, where the cable leads to the laptop's dc input jack.

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After battling the beast, and slaying it I managed to gut it... Okay fine all I did was bend a thing metal sheet back.... :|

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Capacitor TIME! Two capacitors rated for 25v, 1000 uf.

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The big capacitor, probably the main one too..

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Hope you guys enjoyed the pictures. Sorry once again I couldn't provide more information. For those of you well versed in the design of a power supply and require more information, let me know.

 

If you're going to attempt this (or any disassembly) again, I'd suggest a Dremel to chop it up.

 

I have a dremel and was my first idea, just it was 11:30 pm didnt want to wake anyone.

 

Why is there so much white glue inside?

Nice photos, +rep.

 

Several observations:

I hate how these cheap supplies are soldered, they first place the surface mount parts on, then put the board through the “oven”. Then they put the through hole parts on and run the board through the reflow. That is why you see a lot of solder “globs” on the surface mount parts. It’s the cheap way to do it, cheaper to have someone come back and remove any solder shorts than to run the surface mount the usual way then use selective solder process to take care of the through hole.

The other thing they do is put a ton of glue to quite down the inductors from squealing. Just use a higher quality inductor to reduce that.

However they do use United Chemi-con capacitors which are pretty good.

Overall pretty typical supply.

 

I'm gonna throw Panasonic and Sanyos up there as well. I'm a fan of Japanese caps. I've gotten into the habit of picking up my friends' "broken" electronics, cracking them open, and replacing the busted caps to revive dead devices. They get a little mad when I tell em I fixed it for ~$1.00 + shipping though, and I've had to give back TVs for a 6-pack (unfair trade )

As far as glue goes, the cheaper and more compact you go, the more glue you see. Desktop PSUs tend to glue up the coil and the coil only because there's more space for passive components to deal with coil and component whine.